Containers such as bottles and the like have been used for many years to contain liquids and the like to protect the contents while the bottles are being stored or offered for sale. These bottles have included returnable bottles and the nonreturnable bottles. For obvious sanitary reasons these bottles had to be cleaned and/or rinsed prior to being filled or refilled and the systems and methods of cleaning or rinsing such bottles are well developed and in general gave good results. The bottles handled by such systems were normally made from glass and since glass is strong systems for transporting these bottles utilized the strength of the bottles to assist in transporting the bottles.
For instance in the soft drink, beer and other similar industries bottles are usually rinsed before being filled. The rinser apparatus most commonly used is one that accepts empty bottles from a conveyor line and by means of a drive system, applies a forward axial force to one bottle at a time. This bottle is in contact with the preceeding one which is in contact with the one in front of it and so on through the length of the rinser. Hence the force applied at the drive system is transmitted from one bottle to the next by direct contact forcing the bottles to move through a cradling device known as a twist. The twist is made of guide rails which are twisted to make the bottles turn upside down and then right side up as they move through the rinser while water is sprayed in the bottles and then allowed to drain.
With the advent of the thin walled plastic bottles, the previously described system does not perform well for various reasons. For instance, a large force cannot be applied at the entrance drive to obviate a downstream obstruction, since the plastic bottles tend to be crushed. Another problem is that plastic bottles frequently are distorted on the conveyor entering the drive system, and since the drive is set to slightly squeeze the bottles in order to apply an axial force a distortion prevents the squeezing and hence the axial force from being applied. Another common problem is an obstruction at the downstream portion which prevents movement of the plastic containers may cause the containers upstream from the obstruction to be crushed if the drive force is sufficient.
In summary, the present bottle transport systems require strong bottles such as glass bottles since the bottles must be distortion free to properly function in the systems. Consequently, these systems cannot properly handle the modern plastic bottles.
The present invention overcomes these deficiencies associated with bottle transport systems for use with bottle rinsers and the like and permits plastic bottles to be readily transported without being crushed or distorted. Moreover, the invention is capable of being used with present systems by merely modifying these systems to accomodate the invention.